{"id":4022,"date":"2022-01-17T17:34:24","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T00:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mcclanahoochie.com\/blog\/?p=4022"},"modified":"2022-07-31T14:46:26","modified_gmt":"2022-07-31T21:46:26","slug":"10-years-photo-every-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mcclanahoochie.com\/blog\/2022\/01\/10-years-photo-every-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Photo-A-Day Project: 10 Year Milestone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

TL;DR:
January 1, 2022 marked the completion of 10 years<\/em><\/strong> taking a photo every day!
A 10 year milestone is a nice time to wrap this up and shift my focus to other exciting photo projects \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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hyper-speed slide show video (youtube)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How it began:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2012 I began a simple challenge: take at least one photo every day. Some photographers try to do this for 1 year, as a fun way to practice. I also originally began this “photo project 365” as a way to force my self to go take pictures each day with my new DSLR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Very quickly, the project became a lifestyle, and morphed from “let’s go take a picture with my new camera”<\/span><\/em> into “let’s just take many photos each day, and go back and select the most representative photo for that day”<\/span>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, I discovered photo journaling, and this became my new way of living. I came to instinctively think about making sure I take a photo sometime<\/em> every single day, so that I could go back select the one that best represented that day (or the photo I thought was most artistic).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some days, I had so many pictures to share that it was hard to choose , while other days I end up with extremely ordinary\/boring photos. Therefore, this rule sometimes inspired me to be more aware of how I spend my days, so I could keep my photos – and life – more interesting :).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little did I know that I would end up doing this for a whole decade!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

10 Years later…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

and 46K+ total photos later… totaling 3653 photo-of-the-day selections (10*365+3 leap days).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This 10 year photo documentary is available on my instagram @mcclanahoochie365<\/a> and on my personal website mcclanahoochie.com\/365<\/a> – an archive of my actual daily life for the past 10+ years!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I even created a giant hyper-speed slideshow video<\/a> on YouTube (~12mins long). Now, this isn’t the best way to showcase my best<\/em> photos, so I will probably make a highlights reel or post for those separately – stay tuned!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stats for nerds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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…all of these pictures were compressed down to just 1 shared per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is also the first time I’m seeing this data, because it was created while writing this post. The most pictures seem to come in the spring\/summer, mostly correlated to traveling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons learned<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Good:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forcing myself to take a photo every day actually did<\/em> lead to some good pictures that I like that would not have been taken without a constant photo search mindset. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also forced me to be more creative in my photography, both in what to capture and how to post-process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back at literally<\/em> a years worth of photos (especially over multiple years) is very rewarding, and can bring back fun memories. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For these reasons, I can recommend giving a photo-365 project a try for any consecutive period of time (1 month, 6 months, 1yr..). A similar project is the 52-week project (one photo per week for 1 year).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bad:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instagram is NOT suitable as an archiving tool >_<. It is designed for recency, not for hosting a searchable library of pictures. That is one of the reasons I kept my personal site around, so I could query specific days in the past. On Instagram, it is impractical to scroll back to my first picture in 2012.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The side-effect of forcing a photo onto each day is that I shared a lot of pictures that were just, ‘meh’. Maybe not every photo deserves sharing (see next section).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving forward<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

After some long reflection, I’ve decided to not continue doing the photo a day project – or at least the posting<\/em> of daily photos. I’ll probably continue to instinctively take photos every day (after all it’s a 10+ year habit), but I found that over time, the posting\/sharing of the images started to be a burden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I realized I spent a disproportionate amount of time editing a boring photo (one taken on an uneventful day), trying to make it better, rather than editing the actual good photos that I took (on a different day). I had created an unconscious, unattainable goal of trying to only post masterpieces, yet limiting myself to a 24 hour time window and molding the photos around whatever I did that day, instead of making my day more photogenic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be fair, a few of my favorite \/ best photos only happened because I had developed the mindset of constantly looking for photo opportunities (some even made it to Chromecast!), but I have proved to myself that not everyday’s photo is worth sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I look forward to this new year, with a slightly shifted perspective about taking daily photos: I will refocus my energy on curating, editing and sharing quality over quantity from now on \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stay tuned…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Links<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

instagram @mcclanahoochie365<\/a>
personal website mcclanahoochie.com\/365<\/a>
youtube slideshow video:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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